arXiv subjects

Laurent Ferro-Famil

Publications and source records attributed to Laurent Ferro-Famil.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Moment-Matching Array Processing Technique for diffuse source estimation

Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation is a fundamental problem in signal processing. Diffuse sources, whose power density cannot be represented with a single angular coordinate, are usually characterized based on prior assumptions, which associate the source angular density with a specific set of functions. However, these assumptions can lead to significant estimation biases when they are incorrect. This paper introduces the Moment-Matching Estimation Technique (MoMET), a low-complexity method for estimating the mean DOA, spread, and power of a narrow diffuse source without requiring prior knowledge on the source distribution. The unknown source density is characterized by its mean DOA and its first central moments, which are estimated through covariance matching techniques which fit the empirical covariance of the measurements to that modeled from the moments. The MoMET parameterization is robust to incorrect model assumptions, and numerically efficient. The asymptotic bias and covariance of the new estimator are derived and its performance is demonstrated through simulations.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2025

Caract{é}risation d'une Source Diffuse {à} partir des Moments de sa Densit{é} de Puissance en Tomographie SAR

This paper presents a method for estimating the characteristics of a diffuse source from interferometric measurements in the context of SAR tomography. The proposed method is based on the use of central moments of the reflectivity density and does not use any a priori model. The method's performance is discussed as a function of antenna array parameters (resolution and ambiguity).

eess.SP↗

arXiv2025

Moment-based Characterization of Spatially Distributed Sources in SAR Tomography

This paper presents a non-parametric method for 3-D imaging of natural volumes using Synthetic Aperture Radar tomography. This array processing-based technique aims at characterizing a spatially distributed density of incoherent sources, whose shape is imprecisely known. The proposed technique estimates the moments of the reflectivity density using a low-complexity covariance matching approach, and retrieves the mean location, dispersion, and power of the distributed source. Numerical simulations of realistic tomographic scenarios show that the proposed model-free scheme achieves better accuracy than slightly misspecified maximum likelihood estimators, derived from approximately known distribution shapes.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2023

A Deep Learning Approach for SAR Tomographic Imaging of Forested Areas

Synthetic aperture radar tomographic imaging reconstructs the three-dimensional reflectivity of a scene from a set of coherent acquisitions performed in an interferometric configuration. In forest areas, a large number of elements backscatter the radar signal within each resolution cell. To reconstruct the vertical reflectivity profile, state-of-the-art techniques perform a regularized inversion implemented in the form of iterative minimization algorithms. We show that light-weight neural networks can be trained to perform the tomographic inversion with a single feed-forward pass, leading to fast reconstructions that could better scale to the amount of data provided by the future BIOMASS mission. We train our encoder-decoder network using simulated data and validate our technique on real L-band and P-band data.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2021

Urban Surface Reconstruction in SAR Tomography by Graph-Cuts

SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) tomography reconstructs 3-D volumes from stacks of SAR images. High-resolution satellites such as TerraSAR-X provide images that can be combined to produce 3-D models. In urban areas, sparsity priors are generally enforced during the tomographic inversion process in order to retrieve the location of scatterers seen within a given radar resolution cell. However, such priors often miss parts of the urban surfaces. Those missing parts are typically regions of flat areas such as ground or rooftops. This paper introduces a surface segmentation algorithm based on the computation of the optimal cut in a flow network. This segmentation process can be included within the 3-D reconstruction framework in order to improve the recovery of urban surfaces. Illustrations on a TerraSAR-X tomographic dataset demonstrate the potential of the approach to produce a 3-D model of urban surfaces such as ground, façades and rooftops.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2012

Analysis of snowpack properties and structure from TerraSAR-X data, based on multilayer backscattering and snow evolution modeling approaches

Recently launched high precision Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites such as TerraSAR-X, COSMO-SkyMed, etc. present a high potential for better observation and characterization of the cryosphere. This study introduces a new approach using high frequency (X-band) SAR data and an Electromagnetic Backscattering Model (EBM) to constrain the detailed snowpack model Crocus. A snowpack EBM based on radiative transfer theory, previously used for C-band applications, is adapted for the X-band. From measured or simulated snowpack stratigraphic profiles consisting of snow optical grain radius and density, this forward model calculates the backscattering coefficient for different polarimetric channels. The output result is then compared with spaceborne TerraSAR-X acquisitions to evaluate the forward model. Next, from the EBM, the adjoint operator is developed and used in a variational analysis scheme in order to minimize the discrepancies between simulations and SAR observations. A time series of TerraSAR-X acquisitions and in-situ measurements on the Argentière glacier (Mont-Blanc massif, French Alps) are used to evaluate the EBM and the data assimilation scheme. Results indicate that snow stratigraphic profiles obtained after the analysis process show a closer agreement with the measured ones than the initial ones, and therefore demonstrate the high potential of assimilating SAR data to model of snow evolution.

physics.comp-ph↗